George has really lost his friends

In restrained and regretful but unmistakable terms, Peggy Noonan lets on that she does not just disagree with President Bush on this or that issue, she dislikes him.

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Paul K. writes:

I have not always been impressed with Noonan’s acumen—she was among the president’s admirers as recently as three years ago. However, in this column she hits on something about him which is particularly disturbing: all the fiascoes he has presided over and the human suffering for which he is responsible have not seemed to affect him much. Most presidents visibly age in office, but Bush looks as healthy, cocky, and care-free now as he did in 2000, and this seems almost indecent under the circumstances.

I have an older friend, a Korean War veteran, who goes to the Walter Reed Hospital every week and visits patients who are otherwise receiving no visitors. This is not easy or pleasurable for him—far from it. He estimates that for every soldier killed in this war, there are between 10 and 14 who are so severely wounded they will never be able to lead normal lives. These are men who would have died in any previous war but are alive today due to the protective body armor and high quality medical care. One he described seeing a few weeks ago broke my heart just reading bout. A 19-year-old victim of an IED, he is blind and grotesquely disfigured. As it was a nice day, my friend took him outside. As he wrote:

We sat and talked about his high school he recently left. Since he was 19 it was recent. He expressed that there was a nice breeze and he was going to take off his hood, a plastic helmet of sorts with a curtain arrangement around the edge that veiled his head down to his shoulders. In spite of the sudden shock of his appearance, I managed to carry on and not indicate much break in our pleasant conversation. Not so for two women approaching the entry. As they drew near they suddenly stopped their conversation, sucking in their breath simultaneously and very audibly. They scurried away in silence, just wanting to get away from the horror of what they saw. There was no resemblance of a human being. His misshaped head of no ears, no nose, the one remaining eye not located where it should be and most of the surface of his head scar tissue. What was left of his mouth was offset to one side, although he still spoke clearly. One wondered how they had managed to keep him alive. One also knew that if he could see himself he probably wouldn’t want to be among the living. I thought, “Thank God you can’t see.”

In a war for our national survival, we could accept such a tragedy. But for a half-baked and futile policy? As Noonan writes, “[Bush’s] stock answer is that of course he feels the sadness of the families who’ve lost someone in Iraq.” Does he really? If he does, why doesn’t it show?

Charles T. writes:

Why doesn’t Bush seem to be bothered by the casualties of the Iraq war? Why does he not seem to be bothered by his failed presidency?

Simple. He is an elitist and is insulated from the real world by his wealth and influence. The rest of us are cattle to him.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 15, 2007 01:45 AM | Send